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Path of Transformation |
Over the past year, the Institute continued on its path of transforming itself into a multidisciplinary institution, building on its strong foundation in Education-related areas, and the consolidation of additional complementary discipline areas in the Humanities, Social Sciences, and Creative Arts and Culture. Advancing the “Education-plus” vision, these transformational efforts worked in tandem with a strengthening of teaching and research, underpinned by committed staff who workin unison to create synergy between teaching, learning and research.
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Innovative Programmes |
The Institute is keen to nurture students as global citizens who have the passion for teaching and are professionally ready to be the agents of change in
schools and the community.
In 2010-11, the Institute offered 49 University Grants
Committee (UGC)-funded and self-financed programmes
at the undergraduate and postgraduate levels. The wide
array of discipline areas adds value to and complements
the Institute’s core Education programmes while
addressing the evolving needs of society.
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Undergraduate Education |
The undergraduate years are the first step in the direction
of an initial career choice and an enriched and deeper
experience of general education. These years forming
a coherent set of learning experiences in a chosen
discipline area also provide the foundation for future
postgraduate studies. With this multiple positioning
of undergraduate education in mind, the Institute is
committed to creating an academic environment and
curriculum to ensure that the undergraduate experience
will enable individual students to reach their self-actualisation
and social goals.
Under this concept, the newly configured five-year
Bachelor of Education (Honours) programmes and the
four-year non-Education general degree programmes
share a common curriculum framework characterised
by greater choices and different learning pathways
with both breadth and depth in their learning, as
well as local, regional and international dimensions,
meeting the needs of contemporary society in the era of
globalisation and the knowledge revolution.
Further to launching the Bachelor of Arts (Honours)
in Language Studies and Bachelor of Social Sciences
(Honours) in Global and Environmental Studies, the
Institute will be offering its third UGC-funded programme,
the Bachelor of Arts (Honours) in Creative Arts and
Culture, in 2011-12. The programme will aim at
preparing students to be community-based artists who are
able to work across a range of established art forms and
advance the arts and arts education in the local, regional
and international cultural and creative industries.
On the core Education front, the Institute has developed
cross-sectoral Bachelor of Education programmes
covering four majors, Chinese Language, Music,
Physical Education and Visual Arts, to be offered
in 2011-12. This initiative is intended to equip our
students with professional knowledge and experience in
teaching at both primary and secondary schools while
maintaining a central focus on the sector in which they
aspire to teach. This innovative arrangement will not
only enable our students to understand more thoroughly
the requirements of and cognitive development needed
in their studies, but will also provide them with a more
integrated education experience.
The Institute has also introduced other self-financed
programmes that are strongly linked to Education. The
Bachelor of Music in Education (Honours) (Contemporary
Music and Performance Pedagogy) and Bachelor of Health
Education (Honours) programmes are designed to nurture
community musicians and cultivate teachers, school
nurses and social workers with substantial educational
skills and knowledge to serve beyond conventional school
settings. Self-financed programmes preparing educators
and trainers in other fields to be launched in 2011-12
include Greater China Studies, Web Technology, Sports
Science and Liberal Studies Education.
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Postgraduate Education |
The Institute is further expanding its contribution to
enhancing the leadership and professional capacities
of the teaching and related professions through its
postgraduate programmes. Taught Master’s programmes,
including the Master of Education, Master of Arts and
Master of Social Science Education, are designed for educators, trainers and professionals in educational
and related settings, with the aim of developing
their professional knowledge and competence to
meet emerging demands and challenges locally and
internationally. These programmes cover a wide range
of specialisations in educational studies (e.g. language
education, early childhood education, mathematics
education, science education, curriculum and
innovative teaching, special education, educational
and developmental psychology, etc.), linguistics
and communication sciences, music education and
contemporary studio art, ethnicity and global citizenship,
and Greater China studies. Professional doctorates
extend the training to include the systematic and critical
investigation of educational practices, processes or
policies, in the form of a dissertation. The Institute also
offers an International Executive Master of Arts (IEMA)
degree for educational leaders in the Asia-Pacific region.
Since the launch of the UGC-funded Research
Postgraduate programme, the first cohort of research
students have finished their taught courses and are
now commencing their work on research theses. The
Institute will also see its first batch of students in
the Doctor of Education programme completing their
dissertations in the coming months.
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Pursuit of Great Learning
Teaching and Learning
Aiming high at nurturing quality graduates, the Institute
seeks to groom its students as the leaders of the “learning
future”– a future that will require them to think out of the
box, be thoughtful problem solvers, embrace ambitions
that go beyond solely personal gain and demonstrate
genuine humanistic concern for the wider community
and the world. These demanding qualities will only be
achievable through a total learning experience acquired
by learning both in and out of the classroom, through
formal and non-formal curriculum, and supported by
curricular and co-curricular activities.
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Teaching and Research
The Institute adheres to the fundamental value of
using high-quality research to inform innovation in
learning, teaching and curriculum development, and
to support professional practice, policy discourse and
social and human development. Key research outputs of
Institute staff are used as required materials to enhance
learning and teaching at both the undergraduate and
postgraduate levels. Through the Institute Library’s
HKIEd Research Repository and its Hong Kong
Education Bibliographic Database launched in January
2011, research outputs are now easily accessible online
to inform learning, teaching and research development.
Focused research areas underpinned by a critical mass of
active researchers led by renowned scholars are pertinent
to a quality teaching and learning environment. The five
Institute-level Research Centres and ten Faculty-level Research and Development Centres continue to advance
cutting-edge multidisciplinary knowledge in diverse
areas strategic to education and the community in Hong
Kong and the region, such as leadership and change,
assessment and measurement, linguistics and language
information science, governance and citizenship,
language education and acquisition in multilingual
societies, lifelong learning and international education,
and Greater China studies.
The Institute also bolsters its research culture through a
holistic approach of capacity building of Institute staff at
various levels. At the Faculty and Department levels, team
spirit in research is fostered through well-established
researchers taking the lead in promoting a nexus
between teaching and research. At the Institute level,
the overall academic capacity and research leadership are strengthened through global strategic recruitment of
Chair Professors and Professors, and the development
of research postgraduate education. The work on these
fronts has borne fruit, supporting and informing learning
and teaching, and creating a vibrant research culture and
growing research capacity across the Institute.
Research Education
Our internationally renowned academic leaders and
major grant holders form a pool of supervisors for
research students. They provide supervision on a wide
range of educational and related areas, offering quality
team-approach supervision to research students and
mentorship to less experienced researchers.
Each of our research degree students is affiliated with
an Institute- or Faculty-level Research Centre so that
his or her research capacity development can benefit
from considerable exposure to multidisciplinary research
activities and experiences locally and internationally. With
over 200 ongoing research projects in different areas of
education and related disciplines, they provide excellent
opportunities for students to participate in scholarly
activities and share first-hand experiences and insights
that are crucial to the development of their research
competence and horizons.
The overall progress made in the last few years has set
the Institute firmly on the path of transformation into an
Education-focused multidisciplinary institution, strong in
research and research training. The changes enable the
Institute to play an active role in knowledge creation and
knowledge transfer, where distinguished scholars and
experts are working together to foster a culture conducive
to the pursuit of Great Learning, growth in Intellectual
Diversity and dynamism in Free Thinking.
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